In the
introduction to his 1981 anthology “All But
Impossible,” Ed Hoch invited
seventeen well-known authors and reviewers
of detective fiction to rank the top impossible crime novels.
They were
each invited to name their favourite works, up to ten in number, ranked
in order of preference. The cumulative results of this
now-celebrated
exercise are shown in Table 1.

Note that,
despite the French having been major
contributors to the annals of detective fiction, only one novel of
French origin appeared on the list (Gaston
Leroux’s “The Mystery of the
Yellow Room,” named by John Dickson
Carr himself as the greatest work
in the genre). This was scarcely surprising for – with the
exception of
Leroux’s work and Pierre Boileau’s
“Repos de Bacchus” (see FOOTNOTE
1
below) – almost none had been translated into English.
By
contrast,
a great many English-language works had been, and still are, routinely
translated into French, which gives French readers a far wider range of
choice than that available to Anglophones. An exercise recently
organised in Paris should consequently be of considerable interest to
every lover of impossible crimes.

In
January 2007, the noted
French locked room anthologist Roland
Lacourbe suggested to his publisher the creation of a list of
novels
which should be included in any respectable French locked room lover’s
collection. The list was to be included as an appendix to an
anthology
of thirteen seminal novels and short stories selected by him
which was, in fact, published in April of this year under the title
“Mystères à Huis Clos (Mysteries In Camera)” Omnibus
2007. Monsieur Lacourbe in turn invited a number of known locked
room
enthusiasts to nominate candidates for this Locked Room Library.
There
were nine participants in all, including Roland Lacourbe himself.
The
others were: Robert Adey,
editor of the classic bibliography “Locked
Room Murders” and a participant in Ed Hoch’s original ranking;
the three Belgian amateurs responsible for the French equivalent of the
Adey classic, “Chambres Closes, Crimes Impossibles (Locked Rooms,
Impossible Crimes)” Livres sur Sambre 1997: Michel Soupart, Philippe
Fooz, and Vincent Bourgeois;
the co-publisher of “Mystery Scene”
magazine, Brian Skupin; a
French research student whose thesis was on
locked-room literature, Romain Brian;
and two translators of the works
of Paul Halter, the French
writer on whom John Dickson Carr’s mantle is
said to have fallen: Igor Longo
and myself. Six of the nine were able
to read both English and French.

The
exercise differed from
that organised in 1981: in the first place,
all the books had to be available in the French language, although not
necessarily of French origin; secondly, there was to be no limitation
on the number of books nominated; thirdly, no attempt was made to rank
the books. The process was very simple: each participant
submitted his
candidates and the complete list of titles submitted was distributed to
all. Participants were asked to vote only on whether an
individual work
merited inclusion or not (no vetoes were allowed, for reasons which
will become evident.) Any book with at least four votes was
included.

The
resultant Locked Room
Library shown in Table 2 contains ninety-nine
novels. (I have taken the liberty of replacing Carter Dickson’s “The
Third Bullet” – a novella – with Gaston
Leroux’s “The Mystery of the
Yellow Room” which M. Lacourbe had previously declared hors
concours.)
The striking feature of this list is that about 40% of the titles have
never been published in English. I have read a good many of the
French-origin books and they are uniformly of a very high quality, so
it is not just Gallic pride that has given them a place, more a failure
of Anglo-Saxon publishers to recognise the opportunity.

Why was
no attempt made to
rank the works? Well, for a start, those
participants who only spoke English could not be expected to be
familiar with works which had never been translated; the same applied
to the Francophones, but to a far lesser degree. There was the
further
problem that a book might not have been accurately translated, the most
glaring example being Christianna
Brand’s “Death of Jezebel” which some
believe contains one of the most audaciously brilliant locked room
solutions ever published. Unfortunately, the translator clearly
hadn’t
understood it and included his own utterly stupid and banal
solution.
Scarce wonder, then, that it received no votes from the the
Francophones, and was even subject to a veto attempt!

Despite
all these obstacles,
and a few curious omissions (Ngaio
Marsh’s
“Off With His Head,” Agatha Christie’s
“Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” and John
Dickson Carr’s “The
White Priory Murders” to name but three) it is
a pretty fair and comprehensive list, particularly if one adds the
additional 14 titles gleaning 4 votes but not available in French,
which include a couple of superb Japanese mysteries: Akimitsu Takagi’s
“The Tattoo Murders” and Soji Shimada’s
“The Tokyo Zodiac Murders” both
happily available in English.

In the
full knowledge of how
frustrating it is to read about books one
has little chance of reading oneself in the near future (I’m still
hoping someone will publish some of the treasure trove of great
Japanese impossible crime novels I feel sure is out there), I
nevertheless feel obliged to offer a few comments on selected books
and, in passing, offer some insight on French law enforcement and
judicial systems and the resulting influence on French crime literature.

Despite Leroux’s early
triumph, French writers in general came late to
what we call the Golden Age of detective fiction; in fact many wrote
parodies about what they perceived as a style with too many rules and
set in artificial surroundings. One of them (actually a Belgian),
Georges Simenon, declared
war on the genre and could be said to be the
pioneer of the police procedural or whydunnit? There were far
fewer
writers attempting impossible mysteries, but those that did stuck to
the genre and were more prolific than most of their Anglo-Saxon
counterparts. The best-known in the 1930’s were Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac who had
each separately been a winner of one of
France’s top awards, Le Prix du Roman d’Aventures, before teaming
up to write the psychological thrillers for which they became
world-famous (the films ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Diabolique’ were adapted from
their books.)

In the
manner of Ellery Queen,
Boileau was
the Dannay who
crafted the artfully-structured plots and Narcejac was the Lee who
added the colour, characterisation and atmosphere. Boileau’s “Six
Crimes sans Assassin” which translates crudely as “Six Crimes with no
Killer” is a masterpiece. A dying woman stands at a window
calling for
help, but when the police break down her door the apartment is empty
except for her and her dead husband; the only other door is bolted from
the inside. Later, another body appears in a room which has just
been
searched and a fourth inside a house with all doors bolted on the
inside and all windows barred. A fifth person dies inside a
building
guarded on all sides by the police. Each time the fiendish killer
vanishes without a trace and nobody can discover the method he is
using, but all is resolved with impeccable fairness by the time of the
sixth and final death.

Marcel
Lanteaume wrote a
number of impossible crime novels, the most
celebrated of which was “Trompe l’oeil (Trompe l’oeil)!” At the
centre
of a billionaire’s house is a dodecagonal room whose walls are
mirrors.
One of the mirrors can be swung open to reveal a spiral staircase
leading up to a room containing a priceless diamond which is kept under
constant surveillance by a team of six insurance company detectives
from six countries, previously unknown to each other. Every
half-hour,
one of the six is allowed to leave the room for a short break and
return. Despite the extreme measures, and the presence of at
least five
people at all times, when the surveillance is over the real diamond is
found to have been replaced by a false one. How could this
possible
have happened? The solution, while stretching practicality to the
limit, is nevertheless fiendishly ingenious and quite unique.
(This is probably as good a place as any to point out that the French
are more appreciative of a touch of fantasy in their crime fiction than
are the phlegmatic English.)

Noel
Vindry is unknown
outside France yet he wrote thirteen novels,
most of which were impossible crimes. He prided himself on his
strict
adherence to Golden Age rules and was in that sense the antithesis of
Simenon, whose work he detested. His detective is Monsieur Allou,
an
examining magistrate – a feature of the French criminal justice system
whereby a single individual is given total authority over a case, from
investigating crime scenes to questioning witnesses to ordering the
arrest of suspects to preparing the prosecution’s case. Allou is
a
deliberately dry figure about whom we learn almost nothing; his cases
provide all the colourful interest. In “La Maison Qui Tue (The
House
That Kills)” a remote villa is subject to threats from an unseen gang
apparently bent on revenge. Somehow, it appears they gain access
and,
despite police presence in the house, two people die in impossible
circumstances. M.Allou, having solved those cases by the midpoint
of
the novel, is then himself threatened. He is shot in the head
inside
his fourth-floor apartment whose door is locked in the inside.
Someone
standing outside the door hears everything but can see nothing.
When
the door is broken down, the apartment is empty except for Allou who
cannot remember anything. Nobody could have climbed in or out
through
the window and nobody could have left through the door, yet there is
nobody else there.

In
contrast to Boileau and
Vindry, Messrs. Herbert and Wyl
were not
prolific, but their “La Maison Interdite (The Forbidden House)” is a
minor classic. A mysterious stranger who has been threatening the
owner
of an isolated mansion appears on the threshold one dark and stormy
night. The staff, hiding in fear, hear words exchanged, shots
ringing
out, and the door clanging shut in the face of one of the estate
watchmen. Their master is subsequently found dead but his
assailant has
vanished under their noses. I selected this book because it has
without
question the finest court-room denouement I have ever read, but one
only made possible by the French judicial system. One of the
defence
witnesses is allowed by the three-judge tribunal (a characteristic of
the French system) to build a case which exonerates the accused and
reveals a solution which is a total surprise but an inevitable one in
hindsight, all while the judges sit passively by and let him
talk. It
could never happen in the UK or the US.

Yet
another feature of French
detective fiction is how much deference
is given by the police to the gifted amateur. In Carr’s work, Fell and
Merrivale work with highly competent professionals Hadley and Masters,
each quite capable of insightful deduction; the French template is
closer to Holmes’ contemptuous treatment of Lestrade. In their
Golden
Age literature the police are usually ciphers in the background.
Rare
is the instance of a mid-rank policeman solving a crime in the manner
of a French, a Trent or an Alleyn. (Simenon was not Golden Age
and
having a policeman as the solver of mysteries was another way he
distanced himself from the ‘cosies.’ It did not, however, prevent
him
from writing a very decent locked room short story: “The House in Croix
Rousse.”) The absence of the police detective in French
literature may
well be a reflection of the reduced power of the local police
themselves compared to their English and American counterparts.
Not
only did anyone below the equivalent of Chief Inspector have to
defer to the examining magistrate but in the 1930’s they also had to
cope with the Brigade Mobile – the equivalent of Scotland Yard’s Flying
Squad, but on a national scale – which could swoop down and usurp their
powers without warning. Not surprisingly, their morale was
terrible and
any arrogant amateur could cow them into submission. (Philo Vance
would
have had a field day and Ellery Queen would have disowned his father.)

This
contempt for the police
is not found in the books of Paul
Halter,
the most prolific author of impossible crimes in French fiction and the
closest rival to John Dickson Carr
in the quantity and quality of his
output. At the time of writing, he has produced thirty-one novels
and
fifteen short stories (of which all but a few are impossible crime
mysteries). His principle detectives are Dr. Alan Twist, a
criminologist who works hand in glove with Inspector Archibald Hurst of
the Yard, and Owen Burns, an Edwardian aesthete who finds art in murder
and whose police partner has the unlikely name of Inspector
Wedekind.
One explanation for Halter’s police having more respect is that all his
novels take place in England.

The
February 2005 issue of Mystery*File
(also online) covered M. Halter’s
work in
some detail, so I will not repeat myself here, except to say that his
creative brilliance continues unabated. Since that article, a
collection of his short stories entitled “The Night of the Wolf” has
been published in English by Wildside Press, to critical acclaim,
including one story: “The Flower Girl” being nominated for a Barry
Award. (FOOTNOTE 2.) Of the ninety-nine novels
nominated for the Locked Room
Library,
thirteen were by Halter, a number exceeded only by Carr/Dickson, yet no
publisher has so far stepped forward to offer any of Halter’s novels to
the Anglophone market. Surely there is an opportunity here, not
just
for Halter but for Boileau, Vindry and the others who, between
them
have contributed 40% of some of the best locked room novels ever
written.

Whether
that happens or not, M Lacourbe
will have
performed a valuable
service, even for those unable to read French: he will, for the first
time, have identified the 60 to 70 best locked room mysteries in the
English language.

FOOTNOTE
1: The full
circumstances are not yet
known, but in a sense the book “Repos de Bacchus” byPierre
Boileau has appeared in English as “The Sleeping Bacchus,” but attributed
to Hilary St.George
Saunders. While
the latter wrote many other
mysteries and thrillers under several pen names, Francis Beeding being
the most notable among them, this
is the only mystery novel to appear under
Saunders’ own name.

When I spoke recently to Robert Adey about the
Saunders book, he read to me
the salient part of
his introduction:

“I am
indebted to Mr. Boileau for permission to adapt for my purpose certain
scenes and situations depicted in his novel and for permission to use
the title.”

I haven’t read Saunders book, and Bob hasn’t read Bouleau’s, so there’s no side-by-side
comparison, but I suspect that Saunders borrowed very extensively from
Boileau.